Israel Barred Gates of the Holy Sepulchre: The Dark Reality of Ben Gvir’s Security Policy

Israel Barred Gates of the Holy Sepulchre

On the holiest day of the Christian calendar, in the holiest city on earth, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church was turned away from the site of the Resurrection by Israeli police. Now ask yourself one question: what would the world be saying if it were the Western Wall?

The gates of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were barred on Palm Sunday. Not by a storm. Not by a collapse of infrastructure. Not by any threat that a reasonable person, in any security briefing ever written, could seriously identify as a danger requiring the forcible exclusion of elderly prelates walking quietly through the streets of the Old City.

For the first time in centuries, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the senior heads of the Church were prevented from entering to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass. They were stopped en route, proceeding privately and without any characteristics of a procession or ceremonial act, and were compelled to turn back.

The Latin Patriarchate did not reach for diplomatic softness in its response. It described the action as a manifestly unreasonable and grossly disproportionate measure, a hasty and fundamentally flawed decision, tainted by improper considerations, and a grave precedent that disregards the sensibilities of billions of people.

Billions. Not thousands. Not a constituency to be managed. Two thousand years of Christian civilisation, on the day that commemorates a man’s peaceful entry into that same city, told to go home by the state that now controls the gates.

TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK

There is a thought experiment that cuts through every attempt to frame this as a routine security matter. Perform it honestly and see what you find.

Imagine that Muslim authorities, or Christian ones, had physically barred access to the Western Wall on the eve of Yom Kippur. Imagine that the worshippers turned away were not a Cardinal and his companions, but a Chief Rabbi and the senior leadership of Israeli Judaism, stopped by police before they could reach the Wailing Wall to pray.

The global response would not be described in terms of crowd control or emergency vehicle access. It would be called what it was: a desecration. A deliberate act of religious hostility. An affront to Jewish people everywhere. There would be emergency sessions of parliaments, presidential statements within the hour, and the phrase “antisemitism” would appear in every headline from Washington to Warsaw before the sun had set.

That response would be entirely correct. It would be proportionate to the gravity of the act.

The gravity of Sunday’s act is precisely equal. The standard must be, too.

WHO GUARDS THE POLICE?

The Israeli government’s official line, delivered with the practised smoothness of a communications operation in full flight, was that there was no malicious intent whatsoever, only concern for the safety of the celebrants. The National Security Ministry, which oversees the Israeli police, cited public safety and the complexity of Old City access for emergency vehicles.

The National Security Ministry is led by Itamar Ben Gvir.

Ben Gvir is an admirer of the late racist rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded the far-right Kach party, labelled a terrorist organisation and banned from parliamentary elections. In 2007, Ben Gvir was convicted for incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organisation. A former disciple of the extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, Ben Gvir was known in his youth for his affiliation with Kach, a Jewish supremacist group outlawed in both Israel and the United States as a terrorist organisation.

This is the man whose ministry issued Sunday’s orders to the police.

But the detail that should be placed before every Western government currently offering its diplomatic understanding to Jerusalem is this: Ben Gvir’s top advisor, Bentzi Gopstein, a notorious Kahanist who has been banned from running for the Knesset, has advocated burning churches, and runs the far-right racist group Lehava. He is reportedly very involved in many decisions regarding the police top brass and its conduct.

A man whose closest political advisor has called for the burning of churches now oversees the police force that turned a Cardinal away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The reader may decide how much weight to give to assurances of no malicious intent.

THE COALITION OF THE EXTREME

Netanyahu did not arrive at this position alone. Ben Gvir and Smotrich hold the balance of power in Netanyahu’s coalition, controlling 20 seats in his 67-seat coalition. This has enabled them to consolidate decades of settler activity outside of parliamentary legitimacy into influencing government policy.

Smotrich, who has described himself as a “fascist homophobe,” has previously advocated for government reprisal attacks on Palestinians and supported segregated maternity wards for Jewish and Arab mothers. In March 2026, in the context of the current war, Smotrich called for Israel to annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, saying the war needed to end with a different reality entirely.

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom have formally sanctioned Ben Gvir and Smotrich for the incitement of violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights, imposing travel bans and asset freezes. Al Jazeera The United States, for its part, called the sanctions “extremely unhelpful.”

This is the government that runs the police force that bars Cardinals from churches and tells the world it means no harm.

A CITY BESIEGED BY ITS OWN STATE

Sunday’s events did not occur in isolation. They occurred within a wider pattern of religious exclusion that the Israeli authorities have imposed across Jerusalem since the beginning of the war with Iran in late February.

Muslims have been completely barred from Al-Aqsa Mosque since the war started, including throughout the entire holy month of Ramadan. The number of Jews permitted to pray at the Western Wall has been capped at fifty per day. The state has suspended the religious rights of all faiths in the city simultaneously. What it has not suspended is the war. What it has not suspended is settlement construction. What it has not suspended is the transformation of Jerusalem from a city of three faiths into an administered fortress.

The Pope, who was celebrating Palm Sunday Mass in Rome when news arrived of the barring of Cardinal Pizzaballa, did not hide behind diplomatic language. Pope Leo prayed especially for the Christians in the Middle East, who are suffering the consequences of a brutal conflict and, in many cases, are unable to observe fully the liturgies of these holy days.

This was not the first time Pope Leo had spoken plainly. He has demanded that Israel stop the collective punishment and forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, and has pleaded for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. He has called for an immediate end to the barbarity of the war and urged against the indiscriminate use of force. In a direct statement, he has said that Israel does not accept the two-state solution, while the Vatican considers it the only solution.

In recent days, the Pope has observed that hatred is increasing, violence keeps getting worse, and more than a million people are isolated, with so many dead. He has urged all authorities to truly work through dialogue to resolve problems.

These are not the words of an organisation hedging its position. They are the words of the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics, watching a government prosecute wars on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen while barring his Church’s most senior representative from its holiest site on the most sacred day of the year.

THE SILENCE THAT SPEAKS

The Italian government has described the barring of Cardinal Pizzaballa as an insult not only to believers, but to every community that recognises religious freedom.

Italy summoned the Israeli ambassador in Rome. Earlier this month, eight Muslim-majority states, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Egypt, jointly condemned the closure of Al-Aqsa as a flagrant violation of international law.

The condemnation stretches from Rome to Riyadh. Yet the British government, which arms Israel and provides diplomatic cover at every significant international juncture, and the American government, whose Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was simultaneously leading a Pentagon prayer service calling for overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy, have offered nothing that would constitute meaningful pressure.

The logic that drives this silence is not complicated. It is simply that the rules do not apply equally. When religious exclusion is suffered by people whose suffering those in power have already decided to discount, the language of religious freedom is not deployed. It is filed away for later use against a more convenient adversary.

THE PROJECT, CLEARLY STATED

The question of what is happening in Jerusalem does not require sophisticated geopolitical analysis. It requires only attention.

Ben Gvir and Smotrich represent a relatively small fraction of Israeli society. Yet they hold the balance of power in Netanyahu’s coalition. They have used that power to obstruct every ceasefire proposal, to expand settlements that multiple governments have declared illegal under international law, and to oversee a security apparatus whose most senior political advisor has called for the burning of the very churches now being closed. The war with Iran has provided new legal cover for old intentions.

This is not a security policy. It is a political project. Its logic is the erasure of Jerusalem’s multi-faith character through the slow accumulation of facts on the ground: closed mosques, barred churches, taxed properties, spat-upon clergy, and now, for the first time in centuries, a Cardinal of Rome turned away from the site of the Resurrection.

Those in the West who continue to offer diplomatic protection to a government containing men who have been sanctioned by their own allies, convicted of racism, and whose advisors advocate the burning of churches, are not defending a democracy. They are financing its negation.

Holy Week tells the story of power mistaking violence for victory. Jerusalem has heard that story before. The stones of the Sepulchre are older than every government that has ever tried to own them.

They will outlast this one too. The question is what the rest of us are prepared to say while it is still possible to say it.

A government whose advisor calls for burning churches just barred a Cardinal from the most sacred site in Christendom. If that is not religious persecution, the phrase has no meaning at all.

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